While it was originally reported that she died of congestive heart failure, which bestselling Canadian author in fact, ended her own life by taking an overdose of medication — a fact later confirmed by her granddaughter?

Our rationale for creating a Facebook page for our school is to “Go where our parents are.”

Since the majority of the parents of our students check their Facebook account daily, but only check our school webpage a few times a year, doesn’t it make sense for our school to have a Facebook page? For example, if we were about to have an Ice Cream Social and we put a notice on our webpage, very few parents would see it. But if we put the same notice on our Facebook page, most of our parents would now know about it.

Mr. Flick’s Guide for Creating a School Facebook Page:

Go to www.facebook.com (if you are automatically logged in, you will need to log out so you go to the actual front page of Facebook.)

Click on the link “Create a page.”

Click “Local Business” and then select “Education” from the pull-down menu.

Type in the name of your page, for example: Bethke Elementary School.

Click the checkbox that says you’re the official representative for your school and you can do this.

Click the “Create Official Page.”

The next screen will ask you to log into your Facebook account.

Fill out the appropriate information and upload some school photos (I wouldn’t upload any photos of students, just shots of the school and teachers)

You now have a Facebook Page for you school.

Now make a link on your school website for people to go to your school’s Facebook page and ask your parents to “like” your school on Facebook.

Later, when you want to edit your school’s Facebook page just log into your Facebook account click on Accounts in the top right of the webpage and click “Manage Pages”

Friday, August 27, 2010

This week, Delaware-based publishing company, Prestwick House, Inc. is proud to release its newest title for the writing classroom, Rhetoric, Logic, & Argumentation, written by Magedah Shabo.

This text contains a wide variety of examples and accompanying exercises that will teach students to use logic in the context of communication — a skill set that is largely neglected in the classroom, but that is part of most states’ educational curriculum standards.

“The Common Core standards are the most pressing reason for teaching these skills in the classroom at present,” says author, Magedah Shabo. “The standards for reading and writing require that students perform logical analyses and write sound arguments."

“If students haven't studied rhetorical appeals or the basics of logic, they'll have to rely on guesswork and intuition as they work toward these goals. But students who have studied these subjects in class will have the advantage of understanding the legitimate methods of persuasion, how logic works, and what a sound argument looks like."

"We ask students to write persuasively but give very [little] guidance as to what is needed to create an effective argumentative/persuasive essay. This book lays the foundation for this information and also provides concrete practice exercises," says Prestwick House National Curriculum Advisory Board Reviewer and teacher, Bernadine M. Stocki.

The text provides a clear curriculum for teaching logic in the language arts classroom. It includes interesting examples taken from famous works of literature, speeches that illustrate the different approaches to persuasion, and fallacious quotes from fictional characters. Exercises range from simple multiple-choice to complex analysis questions that will help students achieve some of the Common Core writing standards.

“I don't know of any other book that treats logic as a tool for writers. That's probably the most unique thing about this text: the fact that it gives logic its proper place in the language-arts classroom, as the primary mode of rhetorical persuasion,” says Shabo.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Many, many years ago, when I was still a young teacher, I had a packet of handouts, allegedly written by famous people, that gave out quick-and-dirty tips on all sorts of language and writing problems. The handouts were distributed by Dow or DuPont or some other chemical or paper company, and I honestly do not remember how I came to be in possession of them.

The one I found most useful—I copied it with abandon and distributed it freely to my students year after year until it disappeared from my cabinet as mysteriously as it had appeared—was “How to Spell.” It was written by (I think) Bill Cosby and offered some of the neatest observations on American English that I have ever encountered.

Here are the tips I remember from the handout. I don’t think I’m violating anyone’s copyright.

I’m tempted to call these “rules,” but I am a descriptivist, and every one of these rules has a few exceptions (though not as many as you’d think), so I’ll call them “tips” instead. Let’s face it, if the following tips clear up half of your kids’ spelling problems, you’re doing pretty well, aren’t you?

First, let’s look at some of our most puzzling and annoying word endings:

Tip: Only four words in the entire language end in ERY: cemetery, confectionery, millinery (ladies’ hats), stationery (as in paper)

Learn them, and you know all the others (because the rest all end in ARY).

Examples: cautionary, reactionary, voluntary and so on …

Now, consider the compound word. We don’t have too many of them in English as compared to other languages—I’m thinking especially of German and the Scandinavian languages—but we do have a few. The key to spelling them correctly is to remember that the compound word is not a prefix-and-root or a root-and-suffix; it is two words fused together into one.

Thus, in words like roommate, bookkeeper, and granddaughter, we don’t have to memorize rules about double-consonants. We need only remember that room ends with m, and mate begins with m. We need the k that ends book, and we need the k that begins keeper, so we need two. Granddaughter is grand + daughter (just as grandfather, grandson, grandmother are all compounds of grand + the name of a filial affinity).

One of my pet peeves—and it’s not a double-consonant word, and I don’t remember its being in the Bill Cosby handout, but—is the misspelling (one s for the prefix and one for the word itself) of background.

What in the world would a back + round be?

We’re not done yet.

How about the way we mangle words and phrases containing the word all?

All right is two words. It means “completely (all) correct, proper, or permissible (right).”

• Would it be all right if I stayed home tonight?

• I checked my work and, while it wasn’t superb, it was all right.

THERE IS NO SUCH WORD AS ALRIGHT.

The opposite of all right is all wrong.

• As usual, your assessment of the situation is all wrong.

THERE IS NO SUCH WORD AS ALWRONG.

It’s simply a matter of thinking before you (or your students) write. Or at least thinking before they edit, revise, and proofread.

There is a great deal of logic in the English language, and those who complain otherwise are either inconversant with the facts or just plain lazy.

One final set of tips I remember from the Cosby handout.

All ready is a two-word phrase that means “completely (all) ready (ready).”

Already is a single word, an adverb, that means something like “so soon” or “by now.”

• By the time I got to the bus stop, the bus had already left.

• I’ve been late to school three times this week already.

Again, it’s a matter of thinking before writing or revising or editing or proofreading. When you think about it, it is logical: we don’t have much problem using all correctly as an adjective:

• All year, Maureen has taken all the credit for all the work we’ve done together.

We shouldn’t have trouble using it as an adverb:

• The glue is all gone. The glitter is all used up as well. Still, the project is all ready, and I think we’ll be all right once we present it to the class.

Last one:

A lot is two words. The opposite of a lot is a little.

• Angus ate a lot of beef while Naomi ate only a little.

We don’t seem to believe there’s such a word as alittle, so why do we think there’s a word like alot?

As I said at the beginning of this, learning these tips—learning the convention, perhaps memorizing the few exceptions in order to apply the convention in all the other cases—should help your students eradicate a lot (two words) of their spelling errors.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

While it was originally reported that she died of congestive heart failure, which bestselling Canadian author in fact, ended her own life by taking an overdose of medication — a fact later confirmed by her granddaughter?

About whom did William Wordsworth write, “There was no doubt that this poor man was mad…” ?

Which American short story writer and poet continually called the name “Reynolds!” the night before his death?

Which author is believed to have died from choking on too much coffee?

Which American author suffered a heart attack as a result of falling off of a horse?

Which author was offered a Clerkship of Journals in the House of Lords, but was so overcome by stress that he had to forego the position due to a “period of insanity?”

William Cowper

Who was not only the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature after Rudyard Kipling, but also the shortest-lived of any literature laureate to date, having died in an automobile accident just over two years after receiving the award?

Monday, August 23, 2010

A chestnut tree beloved by Holocaust victim Anne Frank as she wrote her diary in hiding in the Netherlands fell down Monday, the Anne Frank House museum told CNN. The tree, which was more than 150 years old, had been diseased since 2005 and had a support structure to help keep it upright.

But it fell early Monday afternoon, Anne Frank House representative Maatje Mostart said. "It's a pity. It's an important tree," she said. "Anne Frank looked down on it from her hiding place. It was the only piece of nature she could see." "Something went wrong with the support," she added. "Happily it fell the right way. It didn't fall on the secret annex or on a person, so that was a relief for us."

Frank, a teenage girl whose diary of her time in hiding during World War II was published after she died in the Holocaust, mentions the tree three times in her writings. "Our chestnut tree is in full bloom. It's covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year," she wrote in May 1944, shortly before she and her family were discovered and deported to concentration camps.

Since the tree was found to be diseased, hundreds of saplings grown from its chestnuts have been donated to schools and parks around the world, the Anne Frank Museum said.

Frank admired the tree from the attic window of the secret annex where her family hid for two years, before being betrayed. "From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind," she wrote on February 23, 1944. "As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be."

The spring before her family and the others hiding with them were captured, the girl focused on the tree's budding life - and her own."Our chestnut tree is already quite greenish and you can even see little blooms here and there," she wrote on April 18, 1944. Two days earlier, she'd recorded her first kiss.

Frank died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen just weeks before the Nazi concentration camp was liberated in 1945. But her name, story and message live on through her diary and, also, through her ailing tree. A fungus had left two-thirds of it hollow, said Anne Frank House spokeswoman Annemarie Bekker. A battle began in late 2007 between city officials who wanted to chop it down and activists who insisted it should stay.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Making its debut on shelves today, Rhetoric, Logic, & Argumentation by Magedah Shabo is the first text that gives logic its proper place in the language-arts classroom — as the primary mode of rhetorical persuasion.

Rhetoric, Logic, & Argumentation, complete with Teacher’s Edition, will help you provide students with the tools they’ll need to systematically analyze both their own arguments and the arguments they will encounter, whether in your classroom or in the real world. After using this book and completing the exercises, your students will become more purposeful in their approaches to writing and more confident in their ability to use language.

"The book is organized in an easy to read-follow manner. It does not give you too much information per page. Each page contains pertinent information but does not overwhelm the reader."

- Jodi Gray Kahn

"As stated in the introduction, we ask students to write persuasively but give very [little] guidance as to what is needed to create an effective argumentative/persuasive essay. This book lays the foundation for this information and also provides concrete practice exercises."

- Bernadine M. Srocki

"As a teacher of a Pre-AP class, I've found that there are limited resources that are useful for introducing the concept of rhetoric and persuasion to younger students. I think this book will be very useful."

- Elizabeth Miley

"For a course where high-level thinking and reasoning in writing are required, this book is really essential. Students need to learn how to properly formulate their arguments and not fall into traps."

- Leticia Geldart

"This book makes me want to teach the subject matter. I found the information very interesting and inviting."

- Jodi Gray Kahn

"I would recommend this book without hesitation to anyone teaching the concepts of rhetoric, logic, and argumentation. It provides the perfect springboard for taking the lessons into more advanced materials."

- Karen F. Jones

"I like the examples of persuasive speeches that are provided. I also like how simply everything is explained; it does not seem mysterious or overly-complicated."

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

This Friday, August 20th, Prestwick House will debut our newest title, Rhetoric, Logic, & Argumentation. Author, Magedah Shabo, has agreed to speak about her experiences in writing this unique guide to writing using the concept of rhetoric, how this project has influenced her personally, and how this comprehensive text will improve your writing classes.

How does this book differ from more traditional texts?

I don't know of any other book that treats logic as a tool for writers. That's probably the most unique thing about this text: the fact that it gives logic its proper place in the language-arts classroom, as the primary mode of rhetorical persuasion.

It may not be universal practice to teach logic in the context of communication these days, but the idea certainly isn't new. In fact, it's straight out of Aristotle. The book is really based on a classical understanding of what a student must know in order to communicate well.

Why do you think it is important for students to learn about rhetorical appeals, logic, and logical fallacies?

The Common Core standards are the most pressing reason for teaching these skills at present. The standards for reading and writing require that students perform logical analyses and write sound arguments. If students haven't studied rhetorical appeals or the basics of logic, they'll have to rely on guesswork and intuition as they work toward these goals. But students who've studied these subjects will have the advantage of understanding the legitimate methods of persuasion, how logic works, and what a sound argument looks like.

The point isn't simply to fulfill the standards for their own sake, though. The idea is to teach what benefits students the most—and the Common Core Initiative makes a great case for emphasizing these subjects. In their publications, they say that the ability to write a sound argument is a major determiner of success both in college and in the workforce. For those who are interested, there's a section dedicated to this topic in the standards' Appendix A, called "The Special Place of Argument in the Standards."

What sorts of examples and exercises are included in the text?

Many of the examples in the book are taken from famous works of literature. The rhetoric section includes several speeches that illustrate the different approaches to persuasion, and the logic portion of the text includes fallacious quotes from several fictional characters.

As for the exercises, they range from simple multiple-choice to complex analysis questions. Some of my favorite exercises are the ones that ask students to imitate a given example of a fallacious argument or to evaluate a famous quote from a logical perspective. These exercises should help students achieve some of the Common Core writing standards.

How do you envision teachers using this book in their classrooms?

There are a few different ways to approach the text. Teachers can cover the entire book, or they can focus on a discrete unit, like the section on rhetoric or the chapter on the ad hominem fallacy. The material is concise, and it's divided into short chapters, so it should lend itself well to the time constraints of a classroom situation.

The book was written with AP Language classes in mind, but it could really be used to help students fulfill the reading or writing standards in any advanced course. It should be useful in lessons on composition, rhetoric, speech, debate, or analyzing nonfiction. We've also had a teacher suggest using the text to accompany novels like 1984 and Brave New World.

What level of student is this book appropriate for?

The teachers on our review board seem to think that the book could benefit students at various levels. The general consensus is that it's ideally suited to the intended AP-Language audience, but several teachers have said they'd like to introduce the book's concepts to pre-AP students in tenth or even ninth grade. Others have recommended using the text in composition courses at the college level.

The text scores a 9.7 on the Flesch-Kincaid Grace Level test, which is supposed to correspond roughly to a tenth-grade reading level.

What was your favorite part of the book to write?

One aspect of the book that was particularly fun for me was incorporating classic works of fiction into the text and interacting with them. I enjoyed interrupting fictional conversations to point out fallacious arguments from Huck Finn and Professor Pangloss, among others.

The whole book was a pleasure to write, though. The topics of rhetoric and logic are fascinating, and I learned a lot in the process.

What new projects are around the corner?

I'm currently working on a book that's geared towards the Common Core's Reading Informational Texts standards. This book is still in the concept stage right now, but the idea is to compile a group of grade-appropriate texts and use them to walk students through the reading standards.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Which author was offered a Clerkship of Journals in the House of Lords, but was so overcome by stress that he had to forego the position due to a “period of insanity?”

Who was not only the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature after Rudyard Kipling, but also the shortest-lived of any literature laureate to date, having died in an automobile accident just over two years after receiving the award?

Which author is informally known as "the Chekhov of the suburbs?"

Which author accepted her first chamber opera commission in March 2008?

Which author died while on a tour of the White Mountains in 1864 and is buried in the Sleepy Hallow Cemetery in Massachusetts?

Which play was adapted by the Mudlark Production Company and presented in a series of tweets on Twitter throughout April and May 2010? The Royal Shakespeare Company and the Mudlark Production Company presented a version of Romeo and Juliet, entitled Such Tweet Sorrow, as an improvised, real-time series of tweets on Twitter.

Which great author is the gate on the campus of Harvard beside Canaday Hall dedicated to?Both Anne Bradstreet's father and her husband were instrumental in the founding of Harvard in 1636 and two of her sons were graduates. In October 1997, the gate was dedicated to her, the first published poet in America.

Which author along with friend Robert Southey, attempted to found a utopian commune society, called Pantisocracy, in the wilderness of Pennsylvania?Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Mr. Nicklin is a teacher from my childhood I will always remember. He was not my favourite teacher, nor was he a terrible ogre whose lessons I dreaded. He was not especially funny, eccentric or charismatic. In fact the whole reason I remember him is because of one conversation that, though brief, had a lasting effect on the teacher I would later become.

Mr. Nicklin was a P.E. teacher and like many of the P.E. teachers I came across in my time as a school student, he had the idea that because I wasn’t very good at sport, I didn’t take his lessons seriously or show much effort (I actually love sport, I’m just not much of an athlete). Supposedly, he was a fine cricket player in his youth and was all set to play professionally until an accident damaged the sight in one of his eyes (that was the playground rumour at least – I never found out if it was true or not) and the assumption was that he had become a teacher by force rather than choice.

Anyway, one day we were practicing cricket in the nets and it was nearly my turn to bat. As I was putting all the gear on, Mr. Nicklin came over and made a comment along the lines of “The lesson will be over by the time you finally get all that on” before adding “and then you’ll be bowled out straight away”. He had only told me to get ready two minutes before of course but nevertheless, I took it in my stride and replied that when I watched cricket on TV, the players next in the batting order generally got their equipment on well ahead of time. “Oh?” he said. “Watch cricket on TV, do you?”

I then told him about the matches I had watched recently and the discussion moved onto favourite players, the current state of the English national side and tactics. “Never had you down as a cricket fan,” he said. “I guess you’re not just a time waster after all.” From then on, he always had time for a chat with me and gave me plenty of tips on how to improve my game, even calling me up for the school’s end of year house tournament. However, had that conversation never taken place, had he never learned that I was actually into sports despite my low level of ability, he would have written me off as not worth his attention.

Many years later, I would find myself embarking on a career teaching kids. I would not be doing this by choice either as I had started out as an EFL teacher working with adults but circumstances (I was engaged to be married at the time and wanted a job with better pay and no weekends!) led me to the 4th grade classrooms of a private college in Turkey. I had never worked with kids before and had no idea how to go about it. I soon found myself amazed by how brilliant some of the kids were – intelligent, eager and quick to learn, willing to communicate. However, I was also frustrated by some other kids who just sat in class, doing nothing, showing little interest.

One evening, I was complaining about some of these kids to my newly-wed wife, when I referred to them as ‘time-wasters’. That set a little bell ringing in my head and cast my mind back to my middle school gym all those years ago. Putting myself in the students’ perspective, it occurred to me that perhaps these kids were not just time-wasters. Perhaps they were perfectly willing to learn and interested in English but they just found it difficult and needed a little encouragement.

With this in mind, I started to think about how I could include these kids in the lessons more and get them more motivated. I recalled how finding a common interest with Mr. Nicklin had given us a foundation to build our student-teacher relationship on and so I decided I needed to get to know all my students on a more personal level. And so, midway through the school year, I asked them to produce a project about themselves – their family, best friends, hobbies, favourite TV shows, celebrities and more. Earlier in the year, I would have just taken the finished work in, corrected some grammar errors, given a grade and returned them but for the first time, I focused on the content.

When reviewing their work, I invited the students to present their posters to the class, encouraged questions and had plenty of questions of my own. Afterwards, I made a point of continuing the conversations. I would ask about their favourite sports teams, mention if I had seen one of their favourite singers on TV, ask how their piano recitals went....

Since then, my whole approach to starting the school year with a new class has changed. I no longer revise greetings, the alphabet, numbers and colours during week 1. Instead, I tell them all about my interests and find out all I can about theirs. The addition of computers, projectors and internet (when it works, of course) to the classrooms has enabled me to move beyond just posters as well.

I introduce myself through PowerPoint complete with embedded photos and videos and ask them to do the same. Last year, I received PowerPoint files, homemade videos, photo slideshows and even a Glogster-produced poster or two back from my students and we spent a large chunk of the first two weeks looking at all this wonderful material they had produced. Even the kids who had been together in the same class since 1st grade got to know some new things about their friends.

And I don’t stop there. Whenever I see a new celebrity face or cartoon hero adorning the kids’ notebook covers or stationery, I found out who/what it is and start a conversation. As a teacher of English as a foreign language, I find students are always more motivated to talk about such figures so this provides both language practice and a chance to connect. Unlike Mr. Nicklin and his love of cricket, it doesn’t have to be something I’m interested in.

Believe me, I can’t stand Ben 10, High School Musical or Hannah Montana but knowing about them, talking to the kids about them, showing an interest really helps me forge positive relationships with students. Taking Hannah Montana as an example, I looked her up on the internet and was surprised to find out her father was Billy Ray Cyrus of ‘Achy-Breaky Heart’ fame. The revelation that her dad in the show was a singer himself was news to my students and a viewing of the video online is something those kids still mention when they see me in the corridor two years on!

So, as many teachers around the world prepare for a new academic year, new classes and what to do on the first day, don’t just make that introductory activity a classroom activity, don’t just treat it like a lesson. Use it as a source of information, develop it into something the class really gets involved in and personalises, and make it the foundation of your student-teacher relationship. And most important of all, show your interest. If the kids feel you want to know about them and about what they like, your year will pass with much more satisfaction all round.

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David Dodgson has been an EFL teacher for over ten years, working with young learners at a private college in Turkey for the last eight. He is currently studying for an MA in Educational Technology and TESOL at the University of Manchester. His study interests include developing learner autonomy in children and effectively enhancing classroom practice with technology. To read more, visit Dave's blog, Reflections of a Teacher and Learner, or follow him on Twitter @DaveDodgson.

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